RE: Comments on the new RDF Test Cases draft

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian McBride [mailto:bwm@hplb.hpl.hp.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 4:57 PM
> To: Massimo Marchiori; cmjg@engarde.ioctl.org; phayes@ai.uwf.edu;
> www-rdf-comments@w3.org
> Cc: massimo@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Comments on the new RDF Test Cases draft
>
>
> At 09:58 22/05/2002 -0400, Massimo Marchiori wrote:
> [...]
>
> >So bare-bones, suppose an RDF parser digests one of the test cases, and
> >produces
> >all the triples we expect to (as per the "minimal
> interpretation" currently
> >understood in the Test Cases), plus the following triple:
> >[rdf:type] [rdf:type] [rdf:Property] .
> >Is it compliant to RDF, or not?
>
> No.
>
> >The set of triples that have been produced are virtually
> indistinguishable
> >according to the Model Theory (which is the *meaning* of a graph,
> >independently
> >of its syntax).
> >So, if we limit ourselves to the current Test Cases
> interpretation, we are
> >relying on the syntactical structure rather than on the semantical one,
> >which is something I find very unelegant, and to some extent even
> >logically broken.
> >Said this, yes, this is opinionable and no one (included me)
> will scream loud
> >if the "syntactical equivalence" is used rather than the semantical one.
> >However, I do think it's more elegant to go the semantic way,
> and can't really
> >see many advantages to go for the syntactic way.
>
> We are close to last call now, and have picked our course.  The
> parser test
> cases define the transformation from RDF/XML to an equivalent graph
> described in n-triples, where equivalence is a syntactic
> equivalence.  That
> is unlikely to change unless we see some specific problems with this
> approach.  I take from what you write above, that whilst you prefer tests
> based on semantic equivalence, you are willing to accept test cases based
> on syntactic equivalence.

Brian, that's certainly the case: I don't see any real stopover on this
issue. I'm a bit puzzled by the reply, though: shouldn't the issue be
discussed
by the wg before declared closed? Saying last call is close means little
(actually, last close is just meant for people to send issues...! ;)

Anyway, back to technical arguments: yes, I don't see any stopovers (as
already said in my
email, so this ought to have been clear... no?) on this, just wanted to
share
the doubt that declaring a parser not RDF compliant, even if the RDF
it produces will always work perfectly fine (and be virtually
indistinguishable from the
"officially correct" one), seems a bit odd, especially when the solution
seems easy (use semantical equivalence rather than syntactical one).

Thanks,
-M

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2002 12:12:10 UTC